


Seasons

by brightingales (zoeteniets)



Series: Jarry tumblr prompts [3]
Category: Hollyoaks
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 05:13:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16234868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoeteniets/pseuds/brightingales
Summary: For the tumblr prompt: "People are staring"Harry comes back in December.





	Seasons

The December air blows in from the Atlantic, carrying with it salt-air frosts, red-raw cheeks, and Harry Thompson. America has tanned his skin. He glows with it, standing golden against the pale face villagers who wrap their scarves around their faces and pretend they haven’t seen him. He is no longer the boy who left them. That particular storm has passed.

He arrives on James’s doorstep, an unwelcome early Christmas gift. James lets him in with a huffed sigh an a muttered: “I suppose you’re here to pick up your things.” The cold air comes in with Harry, clinging to his clothes and making James shiver.

“I’m not here for anything but you,” Harry tells him. He reaches out with frozen fingers and winds them gently around James’s neck, pulling him in for a kiss. And though James has sworn that he will never be so vulnerable again, the spell Harry casts is too powerful. The ice around his heart melts.

They hole up together for the winter, like two bears hibernating. James works from home and only leaves the house to fetch them some food. They need no other sustenance; they have each other for that. They lie under the blankets and lick and bite and drink and taste each other until they are both completely full up with love. It settles into James’s belly like a warm meal. Harry continues to glow, this time by the twinkled light of the fairy lights they have strewn around the room.

When the spring-time sun breaks through the windows they emerge from their den. The villagers’ faces peek through their winter garb and finally look at them properly for the first time. Wide eyes take in the way that James carries Harry carefully on his arm, anchoring him lest a strong breeze pick him up and carry him off again. Chapped lips begin to whisper. Gloved hands tell stories.

James buys them coffee. He wraps the bare skin of his palm around a mug and presses the other to the small of Harry’s back, enjoying the warmth he finds there. Harry purrs like a cat who has been lying in the sunshine and for a moment their surroundings seem to melt away. But then a sharp-eyed glance brings them back to the world around them.

“People are staring,” Harry tells him as if he thinks that James hasn’t noticed. Maybe he’ll be offended if he realises he hasn’t been enjoying every ounce of James’s attention?

“People do little else,” James reassures him. “We can go back to the flat if they’re making you uncomfortable.”

He’ll do anything to make Harry feel safe, and the younger man knows it.

“No. Let them stare," he reaches up and presses a kiss to the underside of James's jaw to prove his point. "I want them to see us together.”

The thaw happens suddenly, overnight. The ground is slippery underfoot as the life beneath the soil begins to stir. James and Harry have routines now: jobs to go to, chores to do, evenings to spend alone and unbothered. The village wakes up to the realisation that the two of them are actually quite boring. Soon, there is a new drama to overtake their lives and a new pair of lovers to stare at.

Relations with their families are still cool. Trust is hard won. But hearts beat warm blood and James and Harry’s hearts beat strong enough for all of them. It will take time. They have plenty of it.

Summer tastes like ice-cream and cold coffee and the scent of sun-cream on Harry’s skin. James covers his eyes with sunglasses and observes the world from underneath them as Harry plays with his siblings in the park. The glow comes from within him now, and James would like to pride himself for helping keep the spark that has lived for so long within Harry alive, even when it was just a cold and dying ember.

A pair of hawk-eyes pierce his neck, and James gives in to the temptation to look in the direction the shot has been thrown from. Ste stands frowning- his thunderous face a grey mark against the sunshine of the day. Coldness passes between them, and for a moment James is back in the October rain, the smell of death, decay and damp earth all around him. But the moment breaks. Summer is not the time for fighting. Ste laces his fingers through the hand of his companion and turns his face away. James doesn’t watch him leave; he has something much more pleasing to stare at.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Fine me on tumblr @brightingales for more jarry nonsense


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